Sustainability and conflict in small-scale fisheries

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Sustainability and conflict in small-scale fisheries

Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy

by Anna Sophia Kochalski

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Abstract

Sustainability and conflict in small-scale fisheries

Anna Sophia Kochalski

Small-scale fisheries account for one third of the global fisheries catch and employ the majority of fishers, yet they are under-represented in terms of the science focused on fisheries management and the application of this. The sustainability of small-scale fisheries is crucial to end the global fisheries crisis and ensure food security in coastal areas. This thesis aimed at contributing to the better integration of the ecological and social side of small-scale fisheries in order to move towards sustainability. Using a quantitative linguistic approach, the meanings of sustainability were explored across the fisheries science literature and a holistic and unambiguous definition of sustainability was proposed as “the continuous existence of the socio-ecological fishery system, in such a way that it provides goods and services now and in the future, without depleting natural resources, and the sustainable processes that make both possible”. The thesis compared the meaning and breadth of the sustainability concept in fisheries science literature with the criteria used in fisheries sustainability standards. Twelve core criteria were identified. While a consensus on criteria contributes to transparency towards the consumer, it is also cause for concern because the sustainability standards largely ignored human and social aspects. To assess fisheries from the human or social perspective, this thesis adapted a formal conflict analysis approach from research on peace and war and applied it to an English small-scale fishery with co-management arrangements in place and a UK offshore fishery that is centrally managed. The analysis was based on the line of thinking that the understanding of and way towards sustainability is determined by a societal dialogue and that conflict indicates that this dialogue is facing difficulties. Conflict, which is omnipresent in fisheries but not used as an analytical tool, proved to be a multifaceted phenomenon and an informative indicator to study and assess social sustainability in fisheries, albeit it was not correlated to biological sustainability of fish stocks. The thesis finally integrates the review of the sustainability meanings, the comparison of eco-certification schemes, and the insights from the conflict analysis to determine and discuss their suitability for assessing sustainability of small-scale fisheries. It is finally concluded that sustainability of small-scale fisheries could be furthered by moving away from managing outcomes towards enabling cooperative relationships.

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Index

Abstract _________________________________________________________ III

Index ___________________________________________________________ IV

List of Tables _____________________________________________________ VI

List of Figures ___________________________________________________ VIII

Acknowledgements _______________________________________________ X

Declaration ______________________________________________________ XI

1.

Introduction ___________________________________________________ 1

2.

Improving our understanding of the meaning of ‘sustainability’ ________ 16

2.1. Introduction ____________________________________________________ 16 2.2. Methods _______________________________________________________ 18 2.2.1. Identification of research areas (by citations) ____________________________ 18 2.2.2. Extraction of key terms ______________________________________________ 20 2.2.3. Contextual meaning of fisheries sustainability ___________________________ 22 2.2.4. Implicative meaning of sustainability ___________________________________ 22 2.3. Results _________________________________________________________ 24

2.3.1. Identification of research areas (by citations) ____________________________ 24 2.3.2. Extraction of key terms ______________________________________________ 26 2.3.3. Contextual meaning of fisheries sustainability ___________________________ 28 2.3.4. Implicative meaning of fisheries sustainability ___________________________ 31 2.4. Discussion ______________________________________________________ 36

3.

Fisheries sustainability standards: the issue with the social issues _______ 43

3.1. Introduction ____________________________________________________ 43 3.2. Methods _______________________________________________________ 49 3.2.1. Criteria used by fisheries sustainability standards _________________________ 49 3.2.2. Comparison of sustainability standards and criteria _______________________ 52 3.2.3. Assessments including social criteria ___________________________________ 52 3.3. Results _________________________________________________________ 53

3.3.1. Criteria used by the fisheries sustainability standards _____________________ 53 3.3.2. Similarities between the fisheries sustainability standards _________________ 55

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3.3.3. Core and conflicting criteria ___________________________________________ 58 3.3.4. Identification of candidate social sustainability criteria ____________________ 60 3.4. Discussion ______________________________________________________ 61

4.

Fisheries sustainability: A conflict analysis approach _________________ 72

4.1. Introduction ____________________________________________________ 73 4.2. Methods _______________________________________________________ 76 4.2.1. Case studies ________________________________________________________ 76 4.2.2. The generation of conflict data ________________________________________ 77 4.2.3. Analysis of conflict __________________________________________________ 80 4.3. Results _________________________________________________________ 84

4.3.1. Structure of social network ___________________________________________ 84 4.3.2. Trends in level of conflict _____________________________________________ 86 4.3.3. Patterns of conflict behaviour _________________________________________ 88 4.3.4. Conflict and management for sustainable outcomes ______________________ 90 4.3.5. Conflict during low stock levels in the cod fishery _________________________ 91 4.4. Discussion ______________________________________________________ 92

5.

General Discussion ____________________________________________ 101

5.1. The ‘continuity through time’ of small-scale fisheries __________________ 102 5.2. The ‘sustainable outcomes’ of small-scale fisheries ____________________ 105 5.3. The ‘sustainable processes’ in small-scale fisheries ____________________ 107 5.4. ‘Sustainability as dialogue’ ________________________________________ 109 5.5. Towards sustainability in small-scale fisheries ________________________ 111

References _____________________________________________________ 113

Appendix ______________________________________________________ 139

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List of Tables

Table 2.1: Occurrence of the most common key terms across the abstracts of 4410 publications dealing with fisheries sustainability. Plural forms were turned into singular for the analysis.

Table 2.2: Clusters in a citation network of 4500 publications dealing with fisheries sustainability (Web of Science, 1990-2015). Size is the number of publications per cluster. Key terms specific to the research area are the key terms in the abstracts of the publications forming a cluster after having standardized the key terms’ frequencies; the ten most frequently used key terms in each cluster after standardization are displayed.

Table 2.3: Word combinations of key terms with “sustainable”/”sustainability” in two groups of research areas. Occ. is the percentage of research areas in which the word combinations occur. F is the minimum, median and maximum number of abstracts in which the word combinations occur averaged across the research areas in each group.

Table 3.1: The 20 fisheries eco-certification schemes and recommendation lists, collectively referred to as sustainability standards, their respective certifiers and URLs. Abbreviations are the acronyms for each standard used in the present study. All certifiers are independent non-profit organisations with the following overall objectives: *indicates an eNGO (environmental Non-Governmental Organizations), †developed by or has strong connections to the fishing industry, ‡linked to promotion of seafood products and/or retailers; §developed as government initiative; #organization which consider additional social objectives.

Table 3.2: Scoring system for evaluating the importance of sustainability goals, criteria and indicators in fisheries sustainability information and assessment standards.

Table 3.3: The 35 sustainability criteria, their frequency and importance within 20 sustainability standards; criteria are grouped by the five sustainability themes. “Importance” was scored on a scale from 1 (not important) to 4 (very important) and the median importance across the 20 sustainability standards is shown here. “Frequency” is the share of sustainability standards in which a criterion can be found. For each of the five themes, the overall frequency (the proportion of standards that used at least one criteria per theme) was used and their median importance is indicated (across the 20 standards). The 12 criteria with both a high frequency (>50%) and high importance (≥3) are indicated with an *.

Table 3.4: Importance score (1 low; 4 high) of the 35 sustainability assessment criteria (rows) in the 20 fisheries sustainability standards (columns). Assessment criteria are ordered by themes (leftmost column) and fishery sustainability standards were ordered by their similarity according to a hierarchical clustering solution (Fig. 3.1). †Indicates eco-certification schemes.

Table 3.5: A general classification of sustainability criteria that reflect their usage (based on their frequency of occurrence and importance scoring; Table 3.6) in fisheries sustainability standards.

Table 3.6: Classification of the 35 sustainability criteria based on both their frequency of occurrence across the 20 standards (5-25% low; 80-100% high) and their importance (1-1.5 low; 4 high) within the standards as determined in this study (Table 3.3). For criteria codes see Table 3.1.

Table 3.7: Candidate list for social sustainability criteria relating to fishermen and the fishing communities, that were used in a sample of 51 published studies on fisheries sustainability assessments (this is a randomly selected 15% of the total number of studies identified in a Web of Science search). *criteria that refer to assets that are necessary in order to deal with change and shocks.

Table 3.8. The 12 core sustainability criteria used in the 20 fisheries sustainability standards reviewed here and the suggested additional new sustainability criteria (the first seven are from the literature review and the final two were added to cover a gap identified on management structures and research around social issues). *Indicates core criteria that are similar to those listed in the GSSI global benchmark tool for seafood certification schemes.

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Table 4.2: Example for event coding using the ontology <data> <source> <action> <target> <weight> (Gerner et al. 1994) and the action codes and weights from the Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) database (Schrodt 2012b).

Table 4.32: Action coding scheme used to assess fisheries interactions and their assigned weightings for the analyses of cooperation and conflict. The scheme used is derived from the Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) database. Finshore and Fcod are the relative frequencies of the codes as used in this

study for the conflict analyses of an English inshore and the UK cod fishery in the North Sea, respectively. Codes are presented in order from positive to negative interactions and are broadly grouped as: very positive (+5 to +8), positive (+3 to +4), neutral (-0.4 to +1), negative (-4 to -2), and very negative (-7.5 to -5). The 47 individual codes are presented as 23 aggregations on the basis of their weight (the raw codes are available in supplementary Tables A1-A2).

Table 4.4: The seven actor groups in the conflict analyses of the North Sea cod fishery (1998-2014) and the inshore fishery in the Northwest of England (14 meetings of the administration body from 2011 to 2014). Importance of the groups is expressed as: the mean (± SD) number of other actor groups with which each actor group interacted over time (the degree of interaction), the mean (± SD) number of actor groups an actor group addressed over time (out-degree interactions), and the mean (± SD) number of actor groups that addressed the actor group over time (in-degree interactions).

Table 4.5: Mean (±SD) characteristics of the social networks (size, density and centralization) for the North Sea cod fishery (1998-2014) and the inshore fishery in the Northwest of England (14 meetings of the administration body from 2011 to 2014). Characteristics compared with the Mann-Whitney U rank sum test (p<0.001); significance indicated by ***.

Table 4.6: Correlations between the frequency of key interactions (Kendall’s tau), trends over time and correlation with the overall level of conflict (Kendall's tau; * = p <0.05, ** = p <0.01 and *** = p <0.001). Initiators of action are shown in rows, recipients are shown in columns. Key interactions are shown that occurred either at a high frequency or with a high intensity in the cod fishery and at a high frequency and with a high intensity in the cod fishery. Two key interactions from the inshore fishery are not displayed (Executive>Scientists; Fishing industry>Fishing industry) these occurred at high frequency, but with only moderate intensity; these were not significantly correlated with any of the other interactions, did not show a significant trend over time and were not correlated with overall level of conflict. See Supplementary Table A3 for data on frequency and intensity of interactions. Abbreviations: ind. = industry, Sup. gov. = superior government.

Table A1: Coding and aggregation of actors for the conflict analyses of the inshore fishery in the district of the North Western Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, England.

Table A2: The actor aggregates, the different actor types, and reasoning for the construction of each aggregate used for the conflict analyses of the UK inshore fishery and the North Sea cod (Gadus morhua) fishery. List of actors derived from the Conflict and Mediation Event Observations (CAMEO) database (Schrodt 2012b).

Table A3: Frequency of interactions between Number of years during which actor groups in the UK North Sea cod fishery interacted with each other over out of 17 years (1998-2014), and number of meetings during which actor groups in the NW English inshore fisheries out of over 14 meetings of the Technical, Science and Byelaw Subcommittee of the North Western Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (2011-2014). Initiators of action in rows, recipients in columns. Intensity of interactions, the number of single actions that the actor groups exchanged in total, is given in parenthesis for each interaction combination.

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List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Capture fishery and aquaculture production (million tonnes) between 1950 and 2014 (taken from FAO 2016).

Figure 1.2: Number of fishing vessels of a size of <12 m (solid line), 12-24m (dashed line), and >24m (dotted line) for England and Wales combined from 1966 to 2013 based on the Marine Management Organisation’s (MMO) annual fishery statistics. Missing values in 1990, 1991 and 1999. Solid grey line after 1992 is the number of all fishing vessels registered, the parallel solid black line after 1992 is the number of fishing vessels being active assuming an activity level of 70% (SAIF 2010) in order to continue the time series consistently with the data from 1966 to 1990.

Figure 1.3: Overview of concepts (in bold) and structure of the thesis.

Figure 2.1: A citation network where papers are located within nodes and links between the nodes represent citations. Size of nodes relates to the number of publications within each cluster and thickness of the connecting lines to numbers of citations

Figure 2.2: Publications in the Web of Science Core Collection which contain sustainab* or unsustainab* and “fishery” or “fisheries” in their title, abstract or keywords as a share of all publications which contain “fishery” or “fisheries” in their title, abstract or keywords.

Figure 2.3: A network where papers are located within nodes and links between the nodes represent the correlation between two research clusters (black and grey nodes) based on the use of key words (thick black lines: strong correlation (Spearman’s rho > 0.6175; thin black lines: medium correlation (rho = 0.4870 – 0.6175); thin grey lines: weak correlation (rho < 0.4870)). Size of nodes relates to the number of publications within each cluster. Four clusters that were considered to be independent research areas were not included in the analysis (Id 19, 21, 22 & 23).

Figure 2.4: Examples of key terms and the frequency of their use (% of abstracts) in the two groups of fisheries research areas (Fig. 2.3). Grey bars: research areas including humans; black bars: research areas predominantly concerned with fish.

Figure 2.5: Co-occurrence of key terms (left side) and verbs (right side). Thin line: 1-5 times; intermediate line: 6-10 times; thick line: >10 times. Multi-word terms, e.g. “fisheries management” are not displayed because they had the same linkages as the single word terms (in this case “management”).

Figure 2.6: A conceptual model of fisheries sustainability. The innermost layer ‘continuity through time’ defines those elements of the fishery system that should be sustained (e.g. stocks, resources, ecosystems). The second layer considers the ‘outcomes’ that are derived from those sustained elements of the fishery system. The third layer, considers the ‘processes’ needed to ensure that the different elements of the fishery system are maintained and that sustainable outcomes are achieved. The final layer ‘dialogue’ relates to the societal choices surrounding sustainability, e.g. which elements should be sustained and at what levels, what are the desired outcomes, and which processes are prioritised for achieving both.

Figure 3.1: Hierarchical cluster analysis of the importance scores of the 35 sustainability criteria within 10 eco-certification schemes (“_c”) and 10 sustainable seafood recommendation lists (“_r”). Clustering used Bray-Curtis dissimilarity distance and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean as agglomeration approach. Abbreviations explained in Table 1.

Figure 4.1: Two response functions fx(y) of the behaviour of actor group x towards actor group y dependent on the behaviour of actor group y towards actor x. Actor groups can behave accommodatingly, cooperatively, contentiously or competitively. Attitude to the other actor group (bx) is neutral if response function passes through zero, displacement from zero would indicate a generally positive or negative attitude towards actor group x.

Figure 4.2: Sum of interactions between all actor groups. Positive values indicate cooperative and negative values conflictive interactions. Horizontal line at zero indicates neutral interactions.

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Figure 4.3: Conflict between key actor groups in the in the UK North Sea cod fishery (left) and in the North West English inshore fishery (right). Positive values indicate cooperative and negative values conflictive interactions. Horizontal line at zero indicates neutral interactions.

Figure 4.4: Dynamic behavioural model of the interactions in the cod fishery between the executive, the fishing industry, and environmental groups from 1998 to 2014. (a) Positive (sum of actions > 0) and negative (sum of actions < 0) behaviour of the executive towards the fishing industry as reaction to the behaviour of the fishing industry towards the executive. (b) Positive (sum of actions > 0) and negative (sum of actions < 0) behaviour of environmental representatives towards the executive as reaction to the behaviour of the executive towards the fishing industry.

Figure 4.5: Significance of the dynamic behavioural model of the interactions in the cod fishery between the executive and the fishing industry (left; χ2= 194.2, d.f.=2, p=0.057, GLM), and the executive, the fishing industry and environmental groups (right; χ2= 49.3, d.f.=2, p=0.006, GLM) from 1998 to 2014; dependent interactions are being coded as binomial.

Figure 4.6: Social networks of (a) the inshore fisheries of Northwest England (14 committee meetings between 2011 and 2014) and, (b) the UK North Sea cod fishery between 1998 and 2014. Values on arrows are the mean interactions between each pair of actors during the entire period of observation; positive values indicate cooperation and negative values indicate conflict. Interactions are not displayed if they were of low frequency or of low intensity.

Figure 4.7: North Sea cod (a) landings (‘000t) and (b) spawning stock biomass (‘000t) (SSB) in the UK fishery from 1998 to 2013 and 1998 to 2014, respectively (data from ICES 2014). Landings were restricted by EU quotas which were on average 11% higher than the official landings. SSB was below the SSBlim of 70,000 t

throughout the entire period (ICES 2014). Solid black line indicates overall level of cooperation and conflict in the fishery as determined in this study (positive values indicate cooperation and negative values conflict). Figure 5.1: A conceptual model of fisheries sustainability (from Chapter 2). The innermost layer ‘continuity through time’ defines those elements of the fishery system that should be sustained (e.g. stocks, resources, ecosystems). The second layer considers the ‘outcomes’ that are derived from those sustained elements of the fishery system. The third layer, considers the ‘processes’ needed to ensure that the different elements of the fishery system are maintained and that sustainable outcomes are achieved. The final layer ‘dialogue’ relates to the societal choices surrounding sustainability, e.g. which elements should be sustained and at what levels, what are the desired outcomes, and which processes are prioritised for achieving both.

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Acknowledgements

My first big thanks goes to my wonderful supervisors Chris Frid, Bryony Caswell and Leonie Robinson for their scientific minds, great support and patience; and also for cake, grammar and company. Thanks for following me down the rabbit hole and making sure that I get out again.

My work was funded by a scholarship from the Global Eco-Innovation Centre (Universities of Liverpool and Lancaster), with additional support and guidance from the Centre for Marine and Coastal Studies, now part of NIRAS Consulting Ltd., the North West Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, UK, and the School of Environment, Griffith University, Australia.

Special thanks to Mandy Knott, the NWIFCA Team, and to Ian Gloyne-Phillips, Andy Hughes and Seran Davies for discussions that helped to develop the work. Thanks to Karyn Morrisey for reviewing early drafts of two of the chapters. Thanks to everybody else who supported me with their time and input.

Thanks to my fantastic colleagues and friends in the Division of Ecology & Marine Biology and in the Department of Geography and Planning for scientific inspiration, moral and practical support, for all the cake and the fun, and for making me feel at home in Liverpool.

Thanks to my parents for passing me their love for nature and books which had to lead to this PhD, eventually. Thanks to the rest of my family and friends at home and abroad that kindly forgave me when I didn’t visit or call because of “the PhD thing”.

Thanks to my wonderful partner for coming with me to the windy North (and later to the cloudy centre) of Europe so that I could have a go at my dreams. Thanks for your support, humor, kindness, and for not once stopping to believe in my abilities.

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Declaration

I hereby certify that this dissertation constitutes my own product, that where the language of others is set forth, quotation marks so indicate, and that appropriate credit is given where I have used the language, ideas, expressions or writings of another.

I declare that the dissertation describes original work that has not previously been presented for the award of any other degree of any institution.

________________________ Sophia Kochalski

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1.

Introduction

1.1.

Humans and the environment

The world’s population has grown from 1.5 billion people in the 1900s to 7.4 billion people in the present day (Population Reference Bureau 2016), thanks to technological and medical developments and access to natural resources. However, growth and development have taken their toll on the natural environment. Since the late 1980s, humans have used more resources each year than the Earth can produce in the equivalent period of time; for example it was estimated that in 2007, one and a half Earths would be required to sustain humankind over the long-term (Ewing et al. 2010). This imbalance is mainly due to an increased carbon footprint (Ewing et al. 2010) with the increased production of greenhouse gases leading to changes in the carbon cycle, global warming, Arctic sea ice loss, and rising sea-levels (Stocker et al. 2013). The extent of global environmental change caused by humans since the Industrial Revolution has led to suggestions that we have exceeded several planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015), and now live in a new geological era referred to as the Anthropocene (Crutzen 2002; Steffen et al. 2007).

Anthropogenic environmental change can be observed in all parts of the world, including the world’s oceans, coastal and freshwater systems (Dudgeon et al. 2006; Lotze et al. 2006; Halpern et al. 2008). Usually, several pressures act at once in the natural environment and their interactions can have synergistic and cascading effects (Brook et al. 2008; Halpern et al. 2008). There is clear evidence that we are losing biodiversity of aquatic species at a rate that has increased dramatically since industrialisation (Harnik et al. 2012; Ceballos et al. 2015) and we are also seeing redistribution of species across the world (Chen et al. 2011). The most important anthropogenic drivers of biodiversity loss, species distribution change and resource depletion in the marine environment today are climate change (Hughes et al. 2003; Halpern et al. 2008; Hoegh-Guldberg & Bruno 2010; Stocker et al. 2013) and fishing (Halpern et al. 2008).

In this thesis the concept of fisheries sustainability is explored, with a focus on the implications for small-scale fisheries, where there are some particular challenges (see Section 1.6). In this introductory chapter, I review the background on fisheries exploitation and its impacts (Section 1.2), consider the benefits associated with fishing and the implications of this on sustainability (Section 1.3), describe the different forms of

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fisheries management and challenges associated with these (Sections 1.4), the social aspects of sustainability (Section 1.5), before focusing on the particular issues associated with small-scale fisheries (Section 1.6). Finally I set out the objectives of the thesis and provide a guide to the chapters that follow.

1.2.

Fisheries exploitation, overfishing and wider impacts

Fisheries resources were once thought to be inexhaustible, yet the finite nature of fisheries resources has now become clear and has resulted in a global fisheries crisis (McGoodwin 1995; Buckworth 1998; Pauly et al. 2002; Worm 2016). The oceans have a limited capacity to produce new biomass over the timescales on which we require it and so the number of fish that the oceans can sustain at our current rate of harvest is limited (Pauly & Christensen 1995). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) collects data and produces an authoritative biannual report on the state of world fisheries and aquaculture. The FAO suggest that the maximum production capacity of the oceans was reached in the mid-1990s when global marine catches peaked at 86 million tonnes per year (FAO 2016). Since then, global marine catches have decreased slightly and were close to 82 million tonnes in 2014, the most recent year of assessment (FAO 2016, Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1: Capture fishery and aquaculture production (million tonnes) between 1950 and 2014 (taken from FAO 2016).

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According to estimates that include unreported catches and discards (the part of catch that is thrown back into the sea), global marine catches peaked at 130 million tonnes in the mid-1990s and have since declined (Pauly & Zeller 2016a). The FAO (FAO 2016) and the Sea around Us project (Pauly & Zeller 2016a) estimate that global catches have likely reached their maximum level (Garcia & Grainger 2005). Growth in the seafood sector is now dominated by the aquaculture industry (Godfray et al. 2010; Allison 2011, FAO 2016). However, aquaculture production is associated with its own sustainability challenges in terms of limiting resources that include space, disease, freshwater scarcity and the sustainability of the fish caught in the wild and used as feed (Naylor et al. 2000).

Not only are global fish catches limited, but so are the individual fish stocks. Already within the first half of the 20th _{century, modern fishing technology had advanced to such a degree} that overfishing and the depletion of fish resources became a reality (Russell 1931; Hjort et al. 1933; Graham 1939). At that time, the concept of maximum sustainable yield developed (Baranov 1926; Russell 1931; Schaefer 1954) being defined as the catch that can be obtained annually while maintaining the natural resource at productive levels. In 1975 the proportion of fish stocks with abundances below ‘sustainable levels’ was 10% and by 1989 this had risen to 26% (FAO 2016). Overfishing, without doubt, contributed to the collapse of a number of iconic stocks in the second half of the 20th _{century e.g. North} Atlantic cod, North Sea herring, Atlantic bluefin tuna, and blue whales (Hannesson 2015). In the 1990s, the proportion of overfished stocks continued to rise, albeit at a slower rate. The percentage of overfished stocks peaked in 2008 (32.5%), and has since decreased slightly and in 2011 was estimated at 28.8% (FAO 2016).

The apparent recovery of some fish stocks (Cardinale et al. 2013), and the relatively stable global catch levels since the 1990s, have been used to refute the overfished status (Hannesson 2015) and the rhetoric of a global fisheries crisis has been criticized as being exaggerated and destructive (Hilborn 2004; 2007a; Beddington et al. 2007; Cinner et al. 2013). However, statistics on global catch levels do not take into account that the overfished stocks include highly productive fish stocks (Watson et al. 2003) and that the catch losses have been compensated by fisheries moving into new previously unfished areas (Pauly et al. 2005; Pauly 2009). Such underdeveloped fishing grounds include the deep sea (Clark et al. 2016), the Arctic (Christensen et al. 2014) and other high seas fisheries (Coelho et al. 2015), which were economically unattractive when more accessible stocks still provided good catches. Also, fisheries do not only remove fish, but

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also select for specific traits so that populations may undergo long-term or evolutionary changes such as selection for earlier sexual maturation (Kuparinen & Merilä 2007; Hard et al. 2008; Heino et al. 2015). Finally, fishing has also indirect effects by affecting the ecosystems that support these fish stocks (Jennings & Kaiser 1998).

The impacts of fishing on ecosystems have formed a major part of the rhetoric surrounding the global fisheries crisis (Pauly et al. 2002; Pikitch et al. 2004). Fishing affects marine habitats, and thereby, also the diversity, composition, biomass and productivity of the species that depend on these habitats (Jennings & Kaiser 1998; Fulton et al. 2005; Clark et al. 2016). During fishing operations, non-target species are caught as bycatch or discarded (Alverson 1994; Catchpole et al. 2005; Kelleher 2005; Davies et al. 2009; Bellido et al. 2011) which can have negative effects on populations of the bycatch species (Lewison et al. 2004) and is generally seen as a wasteful practice (Kelleher 2009; Diamond & Beukers-Stewart 2011). Fishing also has a direct impact on marine food webs. In the context of the fisheries crisis, the focus has been on long-lasting changes in the basic structure of food webs, the so-called regime shifts (Lees et al. 2006; Daskalov et al. 2007; Spencer et al. 2011), with the removal of top-predators subsequently causing cascading effects (Myers et al. 2007; Ferretti et al. 2010), and by reducing the average trophic level of food webs (Pauly et al. 1998; Branch 2010; Christensen et al. 2014). Long-lasting changes and degradation of marine ecosystems are not the only reason for concern; a decrease in the provision of resources and benefits to humans is also occurring and this can threaten human well-being (Palumbi et al. 2009).

1.3.

Benefits derived from fisheries

People derive a variety of benefits from the oceans (Costanza & Folke 1997; Holmlund & Hammer 1999; Peterson & Lubchenco 2003; Barbier et al. 2011; Costanza et al. 2014). While some benefits are derived without human intervention (e.g. climate and water regulation), many require a human intermediary to transform natural processes into benefits for human use. Fisheries can be viewed as one such intermediary that uses fish and the oceans to provide a range of benefits. The main benefits provided by fisheries are the provision of food and livelihoods; they also offer the possibility for recreation and cultural experiences, e.g. as tourist attractions (Tokyo fish market, fishing villages) and as a source of local identity (Holmlund & Hammer 1999; Acott & Urquhart 2012; Hattam et al. 2015).

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Of the combined production from capture fisheries and aquaculture, 87.5% is directly used for human consumption (FAO 2016). This means that the global consumption of fish is on average 20 kg per capita (FAO 2016). While developed countries are consuming more fish, and the consumption in developing countries is also rising (FAO 2016), indicating the importance of fish for global food security now and in the future (Godfray et al. 2010; Béné et al. 2016). Food security is defined as “a condition when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 2003). Fish as a food product is rich in proteins and fatty acids and has a particularly important role in securing sufficient nutritious food (Bell et al. 2009; Béné et al. 2016).

After food, employment is the most widely recognized benefit derived from fisheries. Globally, more than 50 million people are directly employed within the fishing industry (Teh & Sumaila 2013). Ain total, the livelihoods of 210 million depend directly and indirectly on the fishing industry (Teh & Sumaila 2013). Recreational fisheries create another million jobs (Teh & Sumaila 2013). Consequently, fisheries contribute significantly to national economies (Dyck & Sumaila 2010), and the global economic impact of fisheries output has been estimated at $301.2 USD billion (Sumaila et al. 2016). In countries where the contribution of fisheries to the overall economy is comparably small, it can still be an important economic activity in rural areas and areas with a historic dependency on the sea (e.g. Brookfield et al. 2005; Natale et al. 2013).

Fisheries also provide a wide range of cultural ecosystem services (Acott & Urquhart 2012), and these are defined as the non-material benefits (e.g. aesthetic, spiritual and psychological) derived from ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). For fisheries, these include recreation, tourism, cultural identity, heritage values, sense of place, spiritual services, inspiration, aesthetic appreciation and educational opportunities (Close et al. 2002; Minnegal et al. 2003; Urquhart & Acott 2014). While there are many case studies describing them, cultural ecosystem services are difficult to measure (Winthrop 2014) so that often only recreation and tourism can be included when discussing the “value” of fisheries (e.g. Hattam et al. 2015). International trade in seafood, part-time employment and diverse livelihood strategies, and the difficulties in estimating cultural services make it difficult to completely assess those delivered by a fishery, but the combination of food supply, employment and cultural ecosystem services ensures that the continuation of fisheries is a management priority across the globe.

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1.4.

Fisheries management and its challenges

Fisheries provide valuable benefits for humans (Section 1.3) whilst also having serious impacts on natural resources and ecosystems (Section 1.2). Global recognition of the need to both continue to exploit marine resources, whilst conserving species diversity is captured in the United Nation’s sustainable development goal 14 (SDG 14), which sets out to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”(United Nations General Assembly 2015). Achieving this balance is often seen as the core task of fisheries management (Rice & Garcia 2011).

Based on the concept of sustainable harvest evolved in 18th century from forest management (Carlowitz 1713; Wiersum 1995; Grober 2012), fisheries management initially aimed at achieving the maximum sustainable yield (MSY; Schaefer 1954). MSY is the yield that can be obtained annually while maintaining the natural resource at the most productive levels and this was the most influential concept in fisheries management throughout the 20th century (Pitcher & Pauly 1998; Charles 2001). However, it has also been a controversial objective for fisheries management because aiming at the highest possible yield makes it easy to overfish and because MSY perpetuates a single species approach that ignores ecosystem complexity (Gulland 1977; Larkin 1977; Cunningham 1981; Ludwig et al. 1993; Botsford et al. 1997; Roberts 1997). Due to these inherent flaws and a lack of political will to reduce overcapacity in the fishing industry (Ludwig et al. 1993) and implement and enforce sustainable catch levels (Daw & Gray 2005; Carbonetti et al. 2014), the MSY concept failed to successfully limit overexploitation. Nevertheless, the MSY persisted in fisheries management (Mesnil 2012), and was later used as an upper limit for fisheries catches rather than as a target (Mace 2001; Punt & Smith 2001). Recognizing the short-comings of MSY, natural and social fisheries science supporting management has sought complementary or superior concepts.

From an economic perspective, MSY evolved into the maximum economic yield (MEY), the catch that persistently maximized the differences between the total revenue and the total costs of the fishery as a whole (Gordon 1954). MEY has often been perceived positively for ecological reasons, because it tends to recommend retaining higher biomass levels in the stock than the MSY (Clark 1990; Grafton et al. 2007). But MEY is not always a “win-win” situation (Grafton et al. 2007) and the trade-offs between ecology and economics are apparent. MEY would recommend the immediate depletion of the stock in the case of profit-maximizing companies exploiting a common-pool resource (Clark 1973),

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thus conflicting with the essential component of sustained yield that is the future of the fisheries resources. Fisheries economists have tried to solve this issue through a rights-based approach, meaning that a fisher or part of the fishing sector buy long-term fishing rights so that they have an incentive not to overexploit resources (Grafton 1996). However, these approaches do not provide incentives to protect the ecosystem and associated species (Gibbs 2010) and often result in the concentration of property rights in the hands of few actors (Yandle & Dewees 2008), so that there have been worries about both the ecological and social consequences of property rights in fisheries (Eythórsson 2000; Yandle & Dewees 2008; Sumaila 2010).

From an ecological perspective, the most influential approach for fisheries management in recent decades has been ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) which views fisheries as part of the ecosystem and thus takes a more holistic approach to fisheries management (Link et al. 2002; Pikitch et al. 2004; Francis et al. 2007). In its extended version, the Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF) also recognizes the interdependencies between humans and the ecosystem (Ward 2002). EBFM is widely accepted at the policy level (Murawski 2007; Smith et al. 2007), but its full implementation suffers from continuing uncertainty surrounding ecological processes and a lack of information (Link et al. 2002; Christie et al. 2007; Pitcher et al. 2009; Collie et al. 2016; Skern-Mauritzen et al. 2015). Therefore, EBFM is often applied as a more holistic approach to fisheries management that combines the management of individual fish stocks with the prevention of bycatch and the protection of habitats (e.g. through preventing the destruction of seafloor habitats by trawling; Hilborn 2011). Fisheries management has addressed the complexity of fisheries and ecosystem interactions by developing more and more complex models (Caddy 1999; Garcia & Charles 2007; Fulton 2010), however, the models can become so complex that they reduce in utility (Plagányi et al. 2014) and it has been suggested that fisheries are confronted by problems that are so complex that a technical solution cannot be found (Jentoft & Chuenpagdee 2009).

The most prominent of the problems that eludes technical solutions is the “Tragedy of the commons”. Hardin (1968) described how the accessibility of common resources leads inevitably to their overexploitation because there is no incentive to preserve the resource for the future when others can easily capitalize on the immediate sacrifice. For a long time, strict state authority or private rights (discussed above) were thought to be the best solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons. However, it has been pointed out that while

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management and markets often fail at circumventing the Tragedy of the Commons, there are natural resource systems that are managed by the resources users themselves and achieve sustainability on their own (Ostrom 1990). This observation has promoted self-governance and co-management in fisheries (Townsend & Shotton 2008; Gutiérrez et al. 2011; Rodwell et al. 2014) and has stimulated research trying to identify the factors that lead to sustainable outcomes from self-governance and co-management (Gutiérrez et al. 2011; Cinner et al. 2016). This line of work is closely linked to the appreciation of local knowledge, adaptive management and resilience thinking (Berkes 2003).

While not an exhaustive list, maximizing yield, rights-based approaches, ecosystem-based fisheries management, and community-based co-management are presently the most prominent approaches for fisheries management (Caddy 1999; Garcia & Charles 2008; Selig et al. 2016). All four approaches employ a suite of restrictions on the inputs (e.g. limited access to fishing grounds, limited fishing time, or gear restrictions) and outputs (e.g. catch quotas) of fisheries and use different technical measures (e.g. spatial and temporal closures, size limits) (Selig et al. 2016). Most importantly, the approaches are not always mutually exclusive but can be combined (e.g. Mace 2001; Beddington et al. 2007).

So overall, fisheries management has a wide range of tools and much has been learnt over the last few decades, but there is a pervasive view that fisheries management has failed (Villasante 2010; Anticamara et al. 2011), given that more than 80 years after being recognized as a problem (Russell 1931) overfishing is far from being solved (Boonstra & Oesterblom 2014). The reasons why fisheries management has not always succeeded in securing sustainability are manifold. Fisheries are inherently difficult to manage because most of the resources are mobile, often crossing natural boundaries, are invisible to the human eye, embedded in complex ecosystem interactions, are exposed to several natural and anthropogenic pressures including environmental changes, and are inherently stochastic in nature, so that it is difficult to predict MSY or yield-based management. However, managed fisheries do tend to be generally more sustainable than those that have not been subject to management (Hilborn & Ovando 2014) and many success stories exist (Hilborn 2007a; 2016; Dankel et al. 2008; Cardinale et al. 2013; Cinner et al. 2013). Alternatively, fisheries management can be considered as a succession of periods of success and periods of failure (Smith 1977). Indeed the criteria for successful fisheries management may depend on whom you ask, so that the failure for one person can

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represent success for another (Hilborn 2007b). When even the formulation of a problem is subjective and difficult and its treatment presents constant challenges, these are referred to as “wicked problems” (Rittel & Weber 1973; Jentoft & Chuenpagdee 2009). Wicked problems are “complex, persistent or reoccurring and hard to fix because they are linked to broader social, economic and policy issues” (Khan & Neis 2010).

1.5.

The social dimensions of fisheries

The observation that “people matter in fisheries” is far from new (e.g. Roedel 1975; Smith 1977), yet the value of people and their choices/needs and influences on fisheries sustainability are not well understood, even with the aspirations set out in ecosystem-based fisheries management. The interactions between the human systems and natural systems have historically been described primarily in economic terms (Vaccaro et al. 2010). Accordingly, fisheries economics (dealing with the human system) and the study of fisheries governance (dealing with the management system) were the first social science disciplines to be incorporated in fisheries science (Wilen 2000; Kooiman et al. 2005; Symes 2006; Pomeroy 2016). Up until the mid-2000s, the contributions of other social science disciplines to fisheries science and management were marginal (Orbach 1989; Jentoft 1997; Kaplan & McCay 2004; Pauly 2006; Bundy et al. 2008; Jacquet 2009; Urquhart et al. 2011; Cinner et al. 2013; Pomeroy 2016). This changed because of the continuing fisheries crisis and the subsequent need for new solutions (Kooiman et al. 2005) and because of international agreements and conventions that expressed a societal demand for a more holistic approach to resource exploitation (Garcia & Charles 2007).

Fisheries are conceptualized as systems that consist of related and interacting subsystems (Garcia & Charles 2007). One possible division of the fishery system into subsystems is that fisheries consist of a natural system, a management system, and a human system (Charles 2001). These subsystems are connected to each other through an adaptive management cycle (Fulton et al. 2011), with resource dynamics in the natural system monitored and assessed by the management system. Based on these assessments, the management system makes decisions that it transfers to and implements within the human system. The human system performs fishing activities and has subsequent impacts on the natural system (Fulton et al. 2011). Within this conceptualization, natural sciences are concerned with the resource dynamics (the natural system) and its assessment (part of the management system), and the social sciences are concerned with the management

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decisions (another part of the management system) and the fishing activities (the human system).

There are three main strands of additional social sciences that can be considered essential for resolving the fisheries crisis and improving its sustainability. (1) Understanding human behaviour and social drivers because they have major impacts on fish stocks and ecosystems. (2) Including societal goals such as food provision and employment within fisheries management because these are the goals commonly traded off against the ecological goals. (3) Analysing the social qualities of the processes of fisheries and fisheries management, e.g. fairness and justice. It has been suggested that resource managers cannot manage the fish directly, only the people exploiting the fish (Jentoft 1997; Hilborn 2007c), so that without understanding the human dimensions of fisheries, the management is bound to fail (Kooiman et al. 2005). A holistic approach to fisheries management is perhaps needed most in those fisheries where the fishery is a key part of economic and social structures (small-scale fisheries).

1.6.

Small-scale fisheries

The use of the terms coastal, inshore, small-scale and artisanal fishery varies between countries dependent on fishing grounds, national administration, fleet structure and technological development (Carvalho et al. 2011; Freire & Garcia-Allut 2000; Stobutzki et al. 2006). There has been much international focus on small-scale fisheries related to their critical role in supporting coastal communities in economically less developed countries (Béné 2006). The FAO has now developed an explicit policy vision for small-scale fisheries that recognises their key role in supporting coastal communities’ social and economic structures, but recognises the challenges they face in terms of ensuring effective sustainable management and competition with industrialised fisheries in increasingly international markets (FAO - http://www.fao.org/fishery/ssf/en).

In most developed countries small-scale fisheries exist alongside ‘industrialised’ commercial fisheries. These fisheries are often seasonal (or at least switch target species seasonally), and tend to fish from small vessels, with those involved tending to be self-employed, or working in small businesses (Guyader et al. 2013). These fisheries typically have a greater proportion of fishers working part-time, and are partly reliant upon other forms of income and often operate in rural locations (Walmsley & Pawson 2007) where

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fuel, equipment and transport costs are higher compared with those for fleets operating out of major ports. Governments often impose less stringent data reporting requirements on these fisheries – easing the regulatory burden on the fishers, but reducing the availability of data on which to base management.

Technological advances and the falling costs of engines, satellite navigation systems, ‘fish finders’ etc., have seen the fishing power of the small-scale fisheries across the world increase (Symes & Phillipson 1997), but this is perhaps most significant in developed countries. For example in the UK, significant reductions in the number of large and medium-sized vessels have been offset by an increase in small fishing vessels (Fig. 1.2) relying on greater fishing power than previous small fishing vessels so that the fleet power has not decreased as much as the number of fishing vessels (MMO 2013). So these fisheries are responsible for a significant proportion of the catch (UK estimates suggest that over half the vessels operate in the inshore sector), and their social and political importance may be higher while their economic impact is constrained by access to markets, lack of security of supply, and high costs.

Figure 1.2: Number of fishing vessels of a size of <12 m (solid line), 12-24m (dashed line), and >24m (dotted line) for England and Wales combined from 1966 to 2013 based on the Marine Management Organisation’s (MMO) annual fishery statistics. Missing values in 1990, 1991 and 1999. Solid grey line after 1992 is the number of all fishing vessels registered, the parallel solid black line after 1992 is the number of fishing vessels being active assuming an activity level of 70% (SAIF 2010) in order to continue the time series consistently with the data from 1966 to 1990.

Small-scale fisheries are also important from an ecological point of view because they mostly take place in coastal areas that provide a range of habitats for plant and animal life and are known for their biodiversity (Costello et al. 1996; Gray 1997). This means that

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 N u m b er o f fis h in g ve ss els

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small-scale fisheries are often potentially in conflict with (biodiversity) conservation management, but are also vulnerable to pressures on the ecosystem from development and reduced water quality (Andrew et al. 2007). Around 120 fish species alone can be found in English inshore waters (Henderson 1989) that also serve as nursery grounds for fish occurring offshore, such as herring, cod, whiting, plaice and sole (Ellis et al. 2012) and as feeding and resting area for seabirds (Tucker & Heath 1994). The limited absolute area of coastal habitats (compared to the high seas habitats) means that inshore areas are a focal point of nature conservation. Approximately 23% of English inshore waters are protected under the European Birds and Habitats Directives (DEFRA 2012); together with the intertidal Sites of Special Scientific Interest, national designated Marine Conservation Zones and Ramsar sites of international importance, these form an extensive network of Marine Protected Areas (HM Government 2011). While fisheries are permitted in the majority of these areas, the nature and intensity of use is increasingly constrained by biodiversity management.

The sustainability of fisheries and integrated ecosystem approaches to fisheries management are required by national (e.g. Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009; Marine Strategy Regulations 2010) and international laws and regulations (e.g. FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries 1995; 5th Conference of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2000; the Reykjavik Declaration 2001; World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002). These frameworks do not distinguish small-scale fisheries from other types of fishery. However, the lack of data has prompted recognition by the FAO that small-scale fisheries are a distinct management challenge (FAO 2015).

Focusing on small-scale fisheries, Pomeroy (2016) reviewed the history of social fishery science by decade: in the 1970s, social fisheries science focused on the understanding of fishing households and communities. In the 1980s, socioeconomic approaches dominated and governance studies predominated in the 1990s. The 2000s saw a broadening of topics and approaches including the ecosystem approach to fisheries, the sustainable livelihood approach, well-being, social-ecological systems, complex adaptive systems, management for resilience and others (Pomeroy 2016). These approaches continued to be studied in the 2010s together with newly emerging market-based approaches and management approaches that integrated different ocean uses (Pomeroy 2016). Pomeroy (2016) concluded the review by pointing out that the different approaches are still “often not utilized together in an integrated manner”.

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So the focus to date has been on the social science of small-scale fisheries that are often critical to the social, historical and economics of small coastal communities. This gives the issue a political importance that exceeds their direct economic value. However, the ability to manage these fisheries is constrained by the lack of understanding of the fishery system. The transient nature (seasonal migrating stocks) and/or temporal variability (boom or bust) of the resource, and the lack of biological models of population dynamics and the data to make such models, all constrain the application of traditional approaches to fisheries management in these systems.

1.7.

Research objectives and structure of the thesis

This Chapter has explained the context and background to fisheries sustainability, the nature of small-scale fisheries, and the development and limits of fisheries management. It identifies the need to further understand and develop tools for assessing the sustainability of small-scale fisheries and elaborates on the research needs. The overall objective of this dissertation was to contribute to the development of approaches to holistically assess the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. In this thesis, I will explore the concept of sustainability and ways of determining and supporting sustainable fisheries in the following way:

Chapter 2 uses a quantitative linguistic approach to analyse the different meanings that

the sustainability concept may take within different fisheries science contexts, and to explore whether there are meanings that stay the same across different contexts (Fig. 1.3). Sustainability is a complex and seemingly abstract concept, and to achieve sustainability it is important to first understand what is meant by the term. Existing definitions of fisheries sustainability leave the concept open to interpretation. Chapter 2 suggests a sustainability definition that is not meant to replace other definitions, but to help improve our understanding of sustainability by compiling, comparing and analysing the different meanings that are already in use. Given the necessities of small-scale fisheries, it was of particular interest if there has been a change over time in the understanding of sustainability away from ecological sustainability and towards socio-economic or a holistic understanding of sustainability.

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Figure 1.3: Overview of key concepts (in bold) and structure of the thesis.

After sustainability, Chapter 3 addresses with eco-certification a second key concept in fisheries science (Fig. 1.3). It investigates how fisheries sustainability is assessed currently from the perspective of eco-certification and other sustainability assessment standards. Thereby, it specifies the definition of fisheries sustainability derived in Chapter 1. It compares the market-based fisheries sustainability standards using their individual sustainability criteria, and it identifies which are most commonly used, forming a core definition within the standards. Based on a review of published case studies from sustainable fisheries, new criteria are proposed that complement those predominantly used in the fisheries sustainability standards to identify how such sustainability stands could be better applied to small-scale fisheries.

Based on the finding that existing sustainability criteria (Chapter 3) are not sufficient to fully operationalize the sustainability definition developed in Chapter 2, Chapter 4 deviates from the common approach of using a set of indicators and criteria to assess sustainability and explores the use of a single but comprehensive indicator, conflict (Fig. 1.3). Conflict is a common phenomenon in fisheries, but it is rarely used as a theoretical tool. In Chapter 4, the usefulness of conflict as sustainability indicator is explored as well as the relationship between this social phenomenon and ecological sustainability. Conflict analysis could be an add-on to stock assessments and highlights the importance of people,

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

Sustainability Conflict Chapter 5 Small-scale fisheries

What is it? How is it

assessed? Alternative assessment? Synthesis & application Contextual & implicative meaning

Set of criteria from

eco-certification

schemes

Single indicator Different understandings of sustainability

Relationship between sustainability

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dialogue and cooperation, and thus might be suitable to support small-scale fisheries management.

In Chapter 5, the meaning and application of the results for determining and supporting the achievement of fisheries sustainability are discussed, with particular reference to the challenges faced by small-scale fisheries and the relationship between sustainability and conflict

This thesis has analysed extensive literature and assessment frameworks to develop approaches that can be applied to provide robust sustainability assessments for the ecological, social and economic dimensions of small-scale fisheries. These tools could be incorporated into market based schemes tailored towards inshore and small-scale fisheries and hence provide incentives that help to drive improvements in fisheries sustainability.

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2.

Improving our understanding of the meaning of ‘sustainability’

Abstract

Sustainability is a central notion in the management of natural resources but its usefulness as a management principle has been challenged because of the ambiguity of the ‘sustainability’ concept. This study analysed the multiple meanings of ‘sustainability’ in 4500 scientific publications on topics related to fisheries sustainability, published between 1990 and 2015. Citation network analysis revealed 19 research areas that shared an ecological understanding of sustainability. Approximately half the publications further focused on fisheries yield and limiting the pressures on ecosystems, while the other half complemented the ecological understanding of sustainability with a socio-economic component. Linguistic analysis revealed there to be a number of implicative meanings associated with the fisheries science literature, sustainability as: continuity through time, the delivery of benefits, and the processes that achieve sustainable outcomes. Reasons for the ambiguous use of ‘fisheries sustainability’ are discussed and ‘fisheries sustainability’ is defined based on the results of the empirical text analysis as “the continuous existence of the socio-ecological fishery system, in such a way that it provides goods and services now and in the future, without depleting natural resources, and the sustainable processes that make both possible”. Furthermore, it is suggested that the elements of the sustainability concept as applied to fisheries science, can be captured in a four-layer conceptual model, whereby dialogue is the outermost layer, and is required in order to set the societal limits or objectives for sustainability. The new sustainability definition and the suggested broader 4-level model could contribute to the operationalization of sustainability goals, improve the communication between stakeholders, and inform sustainable consumer choices.

2.1.

Introduction

Sustainability has long been the key concept within all the fields of natural resource management that have to balance the needs of nature and society (Brklaccich et al. 1991; Wiersum 1995; Mace 2001). The UN report ‘Our Common Future’, also known as the Brundtland Report, examined the interconnectedness of the natural environment and societal development (Brundtland 1987) and paved the way for the global recognition of

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the need for sustainability (Mebratu 1998). Since then, sustainability has become an integral part of the work of governments (United Nations General Assembly 2015) and corporations (Epstein 2008), and a major area of interest for science (Kates 2011). One of the core areas for sustainability science are fisheries (Kajikawa et al. 2007), where sustainability considerations have always formed an integral part of science and management (Mace 2001). The emergence of eco-certification schemes as a relatively new way of safeguarding sustainability (Ward & Phillips 2009; Chapter 3) and the FAO´s guidelines for securing sustainable small-scale fisheries (FAO 2015; Chapter 1) have led to a renewed interest in the concept of sustainability. A good understanding of ‘sustainability’ is essential for both eco-certification and small-scale fisheries: without a clear definition of ‘sustainability’, the fishing industry and the communities dependent on it may be losing out on potential benefits (Shelton & Sinclair 2008), and eco-certification may be granted to fisheries that are not commonly accepted as being sustainable thus undermining the trust in sustainable seafood schemes (Eden et al. 2008; Ben Yousef & Abderrazak 2009; Brécard et al. 2012).

As of now, there is no universally accepted definition of fisheries sustainability (Hilborn et al. 2015). The term appears in national legislation and international agreements (e.g. FAO 1995), but the interpretation of ‘sustainability’ varies between treaties and has changed over time (Rice 2013). The concept has evolved (Mace 2001) and its definition depends on the underlying philosophical assumptions of the individual applying it (Baghramian 2001). ). The goals pursued to achieve sustainability can be as different and potentially irreconcilable as economic efficiency and the provision of employment, or export-oriented production and local food supply (Staples et al. 2004). This variability has led to the conclusion that sustainability is dependent on the individual and cultural context (Garcia & Staples 2000; Hilborn 2005; Shelton & Sinclair 2008; Hilborn et al. 2015) and, essentially, means “different things to different people” (White 2013).

However, the context-dependency of the sustainability concept has been challenged (Shearman 1990). Across several agricultural contexts (Brown et al. 1987), the different perspectives on sustainability were found to always boil down to the meaning of sustainability as “a continuity through time” (Shearman 1990). This definition of sustainability is not very useful because it does not cover what we expect to “continue through time” and how this might be achieved (Hilborn 2005), but it shows a way of defining sustainability in a way that its meaning does not vary from one context to the

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next. Shearman (1990) called this the implicative meaning where a concept changes our understanding of another concept (Shearman 1990). The implicative meaning considers what is understood by a particular combination of terms, e.g. what is meant by a “sustainable fishery” in comparison with just a “fishery” or an “unsustainable fishery”. For example, ‘sustainable’ can change the meaning of ‘economic development’ from measureable economic growth to a multifaceted improvement in the living standards of the poor (‘sustainable economic development’) (Barbier 1987).

For the following analysis, the implicative meaning is understood as the (perhaps hidden) meaning(s) of a term which modifies the meaning of the terms with which it is paired in a consistent manner, whatever the context is. The contextual meaning is the meaning of a term that only unfolds in a specific context e.g. the wider perspective, theory or socio-cultural context in which the term is embedded.

Given the complexity of sustainability challenges, this study does not suggest that ‘sustainability’ has only a single meaning. Instead, it was the aim of this study to improve our understanding of fisheries sustainability by studying both the contextual and the implicative meaning in the fisheries science literature. So far, fisheries sustainability has only been analysed in historic (Mace 2001) or conceptual reviews (Charles 2001; Stojanovic & Farmer 2013; Hilborn et al. 2015). To ensure that all contexts in which sustainability is applied in fisheries science are included, and to minimise potential bias through the reviewer’s own individual and cultural perspective on fisheries sustainability issues, a novel approach from empirical linguistics analysis, previously used to study the academic landscape of sustainability science (e.g. Kajikawa et al. 2007), was employed.

2.2.

Methods

2.2.1.Identification of research areas (by citations)

Scientific publications were used to assess the contextual meaning of fisheries sustainability because they reflected a broad range of perspectives on sustainability. The publications were sampled from the core collection of Web of Science (as at 13.02.2016) using the search terms “sustainab*” or “unsustainab*” and “fisheries” or “fishery” or “fishing” in the publication title, abstract or keywords for a period of 26 years (1990 to 2015). The search only went back to 1990 in order to focus on the more contemporary

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meaning of sustainability in fisheries science. The search yielded 6305 publications which were exported with CitNetExplorer v. 1.0.0 (Van Eck & Waltman 2014) and converted into a citation network with the R package igraph (version 1.0.0) (Csardi 2015).

A citation network displays publications and the references between the publications as a network in which each publication is treated as a node and each reference as a link between two nodes (Kajikawa et al. 2007). 1731 publications that were not citing or being cited by the other publications and that, therefore, were not connected to the main network were deleted. Inspection of the titles and abstracts of the unconnected and thus deleted publications confirmed that they were not dealing with fisheries sustainability. The remaining 4574 publications were checked individually for their relevance. Duplicated publications (N=8), book reviews (N=2), publications dealing with terrestrial hunting (N=7), forestry (N=6), farming (N=7) and other topics not relevant for fisheries (N=8) were deleted from the network. These publications were picked up by the original search e.g. because they adopted an approach from fisheries to another domain. Publications that had a distant relationship to fisheries e.g. agricul